Chinese Army opens (small) window on operations [CSMonitor] “Foreign reporters this week got a rare peek inside an infantry base of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). At the same time, officials were reportedly putting the final touches to a bilingual PLA website that is due to go live on Aug. 1, the 82nd anniversary of its foundation. Taken together, these efforts are designed to signal greater transparency by a 2.3 million-strong military whose rapid expansion has stirred unease among other foreign powers, including Japan and the United States. But these baby steps seem unlikely to silence the debate over China’s military capacity and how it intends to use it in future.”

Hidden Gobi Desert relics found [BBC] “Rare Buddhist treasures, not seen for more than 70 years, have been unearthed in the Gobi Desert. The historic artefacts were buried in the 1930s during Mongolia’s Communist purge, when hundreds of monasteries were looted and destroyed.”

The last tattooed women of the Dulong people [China News Wrap] “The Xinhua News Agency website has a headline photo story about the the last women of the Dulong people in China’s Yunnan province – one of China’s smallest and remote ethnic groups – to have traditional facial tattoos. According to the news story, the custom of facial-tattooing amongst China’s Dulong ethnic group is first described in historical records from the Tang Dynasty (7th to 10th centuries C.E.).”

China closes factory after cadmium pollution protest [Reuters] “China closed a chemical plant after local residents in central Hunan Province protested against cadmium pollution, which killed two people and affected hundreds of others, media reported on Monday. The closure follows a number of recent high profile “mass incidents” which turned violent and prompted media criticism of officials’ failure to respond quickly. Two villagers near the Xianghe Chemical Factory, which had produced zinc sulfate for six years, died in May and June. Autopsies found high levels of cadmium in their bodies, the semi-official China News Agency said.”

China’s stimulus-fueled stock boom alarms Beijing [AP] “The middle-aged crowd in the packed Guosen Securities office jostle around buzzing printers that spit out receipts for their share buys, hoping to cash in on China’s stimulus-fueled stock market boom. “The central government has to fulfill their promise of 8 percent economic growth,” said Wu Jun, 62, a retired civil servant who invested part of his life savings of 50,000 yuan ($7,300) and lives on a 2,000 yuan-a-month ($290 a month) pension. “They’ll come up with measures to keep the market in good shape.””

China Detains 319 People for Links to Xinjiang Riots [Bloomberg] “Chinese police detained 319 people in western Xinjiang province in connection with the nation’s worst ethnic clashes in decades that erupted last month, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The suspects will face charges over riots on July 5 in Xinjiang’s capital, Urumqi, that left 197 people dead”